Name: Edie Adams on Letterman, October 27, 1982
Uploaded: 2015-12-07T01:23:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Edie Adams on Letterman, October 27, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-07. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'Edie Adams on Letterman, October 27, 1982' from Don Giller on Comedy Buff. Published 2015-12-07. Transcript available.

Thank you gentlemen, Paul Schaefer and the orchestra. Ladies and gentlemen, my
next guest
is an actress, singer, comedian, and she is also the widow of comedian Ernie Kovacs.
Kovacs was a
true TV pioneer. In an era when performers like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar
were basically
recreating vaudeville shows on television, he was experimenting with the new
medium. On the air
from 1950 until his untimely death in '62, he has been called the very first
video artist.
Please welcome a woman who is helping America rediscover the marvelous talents
of Ernie
Kovacs, E.D. Adams. Tell me about Mr. Kovacs off camera. What was this man like
to be around?
Oh, he was, you know, same at home, a little crazy, you know, ups and downs,
Hungarian. How
can I explain it?
Hungarian's ups and downs?
Yes, you know, gloomy Sunday and then really as loud as you laugh, that's how
you're going
to cry the next day. But he would do things. Now, I'm a nice white bread Presbyterian
and
I meet this crazy mad man with a mustache and a cigar and a foreign name and I
took him
out to meet my parents in Tenafly and...
They were probably crazy about this.
They were looking at this sideways.
Anyway, he, it was a very hot day as only New Jersey can hear, and he kept
talking about
how he'd like a big gin and tonic, a real big, and we're driving across the
bridge, he said,
I'd mean a real big gin and tonic. So, we get to about Englewood, we're going
to Tenafly,
where he used to live, and he stopped in a pet shop and he got a fishbowl. And,
uh, kept
driving and he went to another place and got a bag of ice and then went to a
liquor store
and got some gin, some tonic and some lime and indeed made himself a fishbowl
of gin and
tonic. And he said, "Urgh!" and I said, "No, that's better." They didn't
understand him.
That's not a bad idea, though, the fishbowl, yeah.
Yeah, it was pretty good. It was pretty good.
Was he, did he enjoy, was he a serious drinker? I mean...
No, I tell you, he used to wake up high. He would wake up so high that he was
afraid to
take an aspirin, because it would push him over the edge. You know, he'd wake
up and say,
"Man, that's the greatest coffee. That's the greatest orange juice. That's the
greatest
everything." Oh, so he would just start his day on a, not, not under the
influence of anything,
but just excited. If he drank or didn't drink, it didn't matter. You know, he
would,
he was the same decibel of manic high all the way through. He just loved, you
know, he loved life.
Uh, tell us about the, the, uh, I tried to describe your television program at
the beginning
of this program, and I screwed it up completely. You tell us what it is and
where people can see it.
Well, this is on Showtime. It's a great, great show, and it's kind of a docudrama.
It's not just a bunch of old clips. Uh, John Barber put them together, and John,
as you know, created real people. And, uh, I think that was kind of a milestone
in television,
too. It kind of, uh, had news and, uh, human of, you know, it just sort of
created that kind of
thing. So he put this together, and Chevy Chase is on it, saying some wonderful
things about how
his roots are, uh, with Ernie. He used to watch as a kid. And Jack Lemmon, and,
uh, then different clips
from different shows. And, uh, I have, uh, a lot, about 200 more hours of this
stuff put
away. At one point, um, he was very close to the crew, as you guys here are. I
watch you a lot,
and my son Josh does, too. He loves him. And, uh, the crew told me after he
died that they,
he owed the network a lot of money, because he used to spend a lot more than he
made. He thought that
was a neat way to go. And, um, I, he was right. Listen, I think it's terrific.
And so they were
using the tapes, as used tapes, just to, you know, to do the news and whatever.
Right. Put commercials
on, auditions, whatever, yeah. That's right, just to save. So I, um, bought
back whatever it was. It's
kind of like a wall of tape, and I don't even know what's on it. It's on two-inch
tape, which you can't
just reel off, because it self-destructs. This is 20 years old, you know. So,
um, we, we are going to put
them all together and see what we have on them on one-inch tape and whatever.
Okay. We, you have
brought, uh, some of what you're, uh, talking about with us. Uh, tell, tell us
what we're going to see
here. Well, now, which is the first, I don't know which clip. I know we brought
some of the things,
uh, from the show, which will be seen on November 13th at 7:30 on Showtime.
This is what, sir?
Parts of the old show. Parts of the old show. Parts of the old show. Okay. So
this will, I guess,
self-explanatory. Okay. Uh, at home, uh, use your television sets for extra
viewing enjoyment.
Oh, my God.
Now, there. Over here, you turn your set on, of course. You get to your
horizontal picture, and you turn it just a little bit. Now, watch, Steve. Watch
it happen.
No, not too far. No, no, that's all right. Now, you're going the other way. You're
going the other way. Right in there. Right in there. Right in there. If you
turn it too far this way, you get it. Too far that way.
I don't know if we're on color or not tonight, but in case you just have a
black and white set and don't have color, and we are in color.
This was experimentation, wasn't it? Because there really wasn't much precedent
for this sort of thing, was there?
No, and whatever he was thinking about would get right on to that screen. Now,
that last little gag was a little $12,000 joke. He saw somebody on television
in California that used to sell used cars, and one day the guy got a sledgehammer
and bashed it in, so he just set that all up and touched it, and $12,000 right
down the drain.
I want to ask you about cigars, and I understand he purchased land in Havana at
one point. Is that correct?
Oh, yes.
We'll do that. We have to pause here for a commercial. We'll be back with Edie
Adams, folks.
Hi. Welcome back. Edie Adams is here. We're talking about Ernie Kovacs. You
mentioned he had a joke.
Oh, yes, they were telling. Did they have a joke? I heard this the other day. I
love it. What do 60 Minutes and a Jewish Mama have in common?
60 Minutes.
I had to do it. I had to. I had to. Where were we?
Tell me about the time he bought land in Havana.
Well, he was very big at playing cards, and I guess one night, I guess, they
all got together and decided that the only way to have all these wonderful,
glorious cigars was to buy some land in Havana.
So they took a couple of those big pots, I guess, and somebody went down and
bought a hillside in Havana, and they were all gloating, and when the next day
Castro took over, and they took it, nothing else came in and out.
Yeah, but that's a lot of money, I'm guessing, to buy a hillside in Havana.
I guess so. Money didn't mean too much in those days.
High stakes? Big gambler, this man?
I guess so, yeah.
We have some more videotape. This is, I guess, just an assortment of early
shows. Is that what you understand this to be, Edie?
Yes.
Okay, let's take a look at some more early Ernie Kovacs, folks.
That's when the first time I've seen a head of lettuce, I had a swell head.
Working for your own show, eh?
Take a little bit of lettuce.
And gently drop it in here.
Don't pad your part. I heard you sneak that line.
And you just get enough of this to...
I've never been able to straighten this thing out now.
If I get that just about here, that's much better.
Right about like that.
A little more to the right.
But he had a pretty good rapport with the people who worked on shows with him,
didn't he?
Oh, yes. Everybody was part of the act. He had to be. We were in Philadelphia.
These are clips from the early, early days. We went on from six to nine every
morning live. And so we had to kill a lot of time. So we would, whatever was
around, you would throw him something and hit him with a chicken and then that
would be a bit. And he'd say, we're going to do a spy sketch tomorrow. Bring in
the trench coat. I never knew what was coming up.
And we just sort of winged it all the way through.
Now, were you married to him at this time or this was later that you got
married?
No. I met him as a girl singer on the show. I knew no popular music. Went down
there and sang my song. I was a loser on the Arthur Godfrey show and went down
and was on the show actually as the master of the 10-second fill.
Whenever it was 10 seconds to commercial, I'd hit him with something or wear a
weird hat and he'd say, what is the crazy girl doing in that hat? Just a second.
We'll be right back.
Yeah. How did he get along with network executives?
They were a no-no. He just didn't get along with them at all. He didn't like
anybody. He didn't get along with sponsors or publicity people or network
people.
And that kind of left it real chilly in there except for the crew, you know.
Is it true that on one occasion perhaps the crew took up a collection to take
out ads about the show or a show that he was involved in?
Yeah. They were really a neat bunch. Every crew that we've worked with. But
they did take a collection and in a trade paper. It's never happened before or
since.
Another time they took a collection and gave him a party. But see, whenever he
was there working with them or they'd work late, he would send out to Jason's
or somewhere for food and he'd order food for everybody.
Yeah.
He was in a 91% tax bracket. That's something that doesn't exist today.
Now explain that the other way. That means that out of every dollar he got to
keep how much?
Nine cents.
Nine cents out of every buck.
And he was kind of a nice spendthrift Hungarian and he figured, I earned that
whole $100. I don't want to give $91 back.
We were talking about the crew and so forth. We have some footage. There's a
person that works on our show, who works on our show, that also worked with Mr.
Kovacs.
And we have this, this is a vintage videotape film. Are these kinescopes that
we're looking at here actually?
Yes, I think they're mostly kinescopes.
Take a look and see if anyone comes to mind as you watch some more of Mr. Kovacs
here.
Good morning and welcome to another session with Mr. Question Man.
All questions received by Mr. Question Man are carefully tabulated and some of
them are filed.
And now for our first letter this morning, Mr. Willard Dribbons of Louisville,
Kentucky writes:
Dear Mr. Question Man, what, if anything, do the following three men have in
common?
Orville Wright, Eli Whitney, and Thomas Alva Edison.
Oh, these three men do indeed have something in common. Not one of them was
born on a Tuesday.
Mr. Henry Randolph Wilson of Brooklyn, New York.
And of course, the lovable Bill Wendell, our announcer. Bill, come here.
Come on over.
Well, you look, can I ask you how old you were there, Bill, or not?
I guess I can.
In mid-20s.
Yeah.
I'm still 29, so I don't know about that.
You played cards with Ernie, didn't you?
Every week after we did the night show from the Hudson Theatre, Ernie had a
group that would
go to his apartment. That's when you lived up Central Park West, right?
Uh-huh.
We started a play maybe at 10 o'clock at night. Our usual group was Ernie, Mark
Connolly,
who wrote Green Pastures, Barry Shearer, the director, and there was Marie Torrey's
husband.
I forget.
Hal Friedman.
Hal Friedman and one or two other Broadway producers. I don't know why I was in
the game.
Maybe Ernie paid me well, but he wanted to get it all back. And we played until
6 o'clock
in the morning. Then... Did you get up and make...
It's a good, clean living for all these kids watching in today.
We had some great games.
Edie mentioned that he bought some land out of one of those pots. What kind of
door are
we talking about here?
Well, I... I bought a book on how to play poker. And I went into a game one
night, and I played
it very, very close to the vest. And when I left about 9 o'clock the next
morning, I had
over $4,000 in cash in my pocket, and I had approximately $2,000 to $3,000 in IOUs.
Ah, my...
Ernie was the fellow that would hold three cards and pull two to a straight. He
was...
Not a good card player?
Not...
Reckless.
Reckless gambler.
Yeah.
Now, tell me about the pie. There seems to be a bit of a discussion here about
the pie.
He says it was one way. I know it was not. This is in Philadelphia, and Ernie
was outside,
very, very cold, and he was doing a political speech-maker takeoff. And I
recall it. He said,
okay, Bill, hit me with the pie. And pie fights are usually done with, you know,
paper plates
and whatever. But this one came with an iron plate straight across, hit him
sideways and
knocked him out.
Now, Bill, you say that wasn't you.
That's true.
The studio was located in a building, and they had about the fourth floor, they
had a TV
camera outside. And I'll tell you about it later because we're gonna go away.
All right. We'll be right back. He'll finish up the pie story later.
Thank you very much. We're out of time. Bill, thank you very much. Edie Adams,
thank you
very much. My thanks to Vic Gold and Bob Orban and to the studio audience.
Tomorrow night now,
we will have Bob Uecker from baseball and Tom Dreeson. Have a good night. Thank
you, folks.
Thank you, folks.

Edie Adams on Letterman, October 27, 1982

Thank you gentlemen, Paul Schaefer and the orchestra. Ladies and gentlemen, my
next guest
is an actress, singer, comedian, and she is also the widow of comedian Ernie Kovacs.
Kovacs was a
true TV pioneer. In an era when performers like Milton Berle and Sid Caesar
were basically
recreating vaudeville shows on television, he was experimenting with the new
medium. On the air
from 1950 until his untimely death in '62, he has been called the very first
video artist.
Please welcome a woman who is helping America rediscover the marvelous talents
of Ernie
Kovacs, E.D. Adams. Tell me about Mr. Kovacs off camera. What was this man like
to be around?
Oh, he was, you know, same at home, a little crazy, you know, ups and downs,
Hungarian. How
can I explain it?
Hungarian's ups and downs?
Yes, you know, gloomy Sunday and then really as loud as you laugh, that's how
you're going
to cry the next day. But he would do things. Now, I'm a nice white bread Presbyterian
and
I meet this crazy mad man with a mustache and a cigar and a foreign name and I
took him
out to meet my parents in Tenafly and...
They were probably crazy about this.
They were looking at this sideways.
Anyway, he, it was a very hot day as only New Jersey can hear, and he kept
talking about
how he'd like a big gin and tonic, a real big, and we're driving across the
bridge, he said,
I'd mean a real big gin and tonic. So, we get to about Englewood, we're going
to Tenafly,
where he used to live, and he stopped in a pet shop and he got a fishbowl. And,
uh, kept
driving and he went to another place and got a bag of ice and then went to a
liquor store
and got some gin, some tonic and some lime and indeed made himself a fishbowl
of gin and
tonic. And he said, "Urgh!" and I said, "No, that's better." They didn't
understand him.
That's not a bad idea, though, the fishbowl, yeah.
Yeah, it was pretty good. It was pretty good.
Was he, did he enjoy, was he a serious drinker? I mean...
No, I tell you, he used to wake up high. He would wake up so high that he was
afraid to
take an aspirin, because it would push him over the edge. You know, he'd wake
up and say,
"Man, that's the greatest coffee. That's the greatest orange juice. That's the
greatest
everything." Oh, so he would just start his day on a, not, not under the
influence of anything,
but just excited. If he drank or didn't drink, it didn't matter. You know, he
would,
he was the same decibel of manic high all the way through. He just loved, you
know, he loved life.
Uh, tell us about the, the, uh, I tried to describe your television program at
the beginning
of this program, and I screwed it up completely. You tell us what it is and
where people can see it.
Well, this is on Showtime. It's a great, great show, and it's kind of a docudrama.
It's not just a bunch of old clips. Uh, John Barber put them together, and John,
as you know, created real people. And, uh, I think that was kind of a milestone
in television,
too. It kind of, uh, had news and, uh, human of, you know, it just sort of
created that kind of
thing. So he put this together, and Chevy Chase is on it, saying some wonderful
things about how
his roots are, uh, with Ernie. He used to watch as a kid. And Jack Lemmon, and,
uh, then different clips
from different shows. And, uh, I have, uh, a lot, about 200 more hours of this
stuff put
away. At one point, um, he was very close to the crew, as you guys here are. I
watch you a lot,
and my son Josh does, too. He loves him. And, uh, the crew told me after he
died that they,
he owed the network a lot of money, because he used to spend a lot more than he
made. He thought that
was a neat way to go. And, um, I, he was right. Listen, I think it's terrific.
And so they were
using the tapes, as used tapes, just to, you know, to do the news and whatever.
Right. Put commercials
on, auditions, whatever, yeah. That's right, just to save. So I, um, bought
back whatever it was. It's
kind of like a wall of tape, and I don't even know what's on it. It's on two-inch
tape, which you can't
just reel off, because it self-destructs. This is 20 years old, you know. So,
um, we, we are going to put
them all together and see what we have on them on one-inch tape and whatever.
Okay. We, you have
brought, uh, some of what you're, uh, talking about with us. Uh, tell, tell us
what we're going to see
here. Well, now, which is the first, I don't know which clip. I know we brought
some of the things,
uh, from the show, which will be seen on November 13th at 7:30 on Showtime.
This is what, sir?
Parts of the old show. Parts of the old show. Parts of the old show. Okay. So
this will, I guess,
self-explanatory. Okay. Uh, at home, uh, use your television sets for extra
viewing enjoyment.
Oh, my God.
Now, there. Over here, you turn your set on, of course. You get to your
horizontal picture, and you turn it just a little bit. Now, watch, Steve. Watch
it happen.
No, not too far. No, no, that's all right. Now, you're going the other way. You're
going the other way. Right in there. Right in there. Right in there. If you
turn it too far this way, you get it. Too far that way.
I don't know if we're on color or not tonight, but in case you just have a
black and white set and don't have color, and we are in color.
This was experimentation, wasn't it? Because there really wasn't much precedent
for this sort of thing, was there?
No, and whatever he was thinking about would get right on to that screen. Now,
that last little gag was a little $12,000 joke. He saw somebody on television
in California that used to sell used cars, and one day the guy got a sledgehammer
and bashed it in, so he just set that all up and touched it, and $12,000 right
down the drain.
I want to ask you about cigars, and I understand he purchased land in Havana at
one point. Is that correct?
Oh, yes.
We'll do that. We have to pause here for a commercial. We'll be back with Edie
Adams, folks.
Hi. Welcome back. Edie Adams is here. We're talking about Ernie Kovacs. You
mentioned he had a joke.
Oh, yes, they were telling. Did they have a joke? I heard this the other day. I
love it. What do 60 Minutes and a Jewish Mama have in common?
60 Minutes.
I had to do it. I had to. I had to. Where were we?
Tell me about the time he bought land in Havana.
Well, he was very big at playing cards, and I guess one night, I guess, they
all got together and decided that the only way to have all these wonderful,
glorious cigars was to buy some land in Havana.
So they took a couple of those big pots, I guess, and somebody went down and
bought a hillside in Havana, and they were all gloating, and when the next day
Castro took over, and they took it, nothing else came in and out.
Yeah, but that's a lot of money, I'm guessing, to buy a hillside in Havana.
I guess so. Money didn't mean too much in those days.
High stakes? Big gambler, this man?
I guess so, yeah.
We have some more videotape. This is, I guess, just an assortment of early
shows. Is that what you understand this to be, Edie?
Yes.
Okay, let's take a look at some more early Ernie Kovacs, folks.
That's when the first time I've seen a head of lettuce, I had a swell head.
Working for your own show, eh?
Take a little bit of lettuce.
And gently drop it in here.
Don't pad your part. I heard you sneak that line.
And you just get enough of this to...
I've never been able to straighten this thing out now.
If I get that just about here, that's much better.
Right about like that.
A little more to the right.
But he had a pretty good rapport with the people who worked on shows with him,
didn't he?
Oh, yes. Everybody was part of the act. He had to be. We were in Philadelphia.
These are clips from the early, early days. We went on from six to nine every
morning live. And so we had to kill a lot of time. So we would, whatever was
around, you would throw him something and hit him with a chicken and then that
would be a bit. And he'd say, we're going to do a spy sketch tomorrow. Bring in
the trench coat. I never knew what was coming up.
And we just sort of winged it all the way through.
Now, were you married to him at this time or this was later that you got
married?
No. I met him as a girl singer on the show. I knew no popular music. Went down
there and sang my song. I was a loser on the Arthur Godfrey show and went down
and was on the show actually as the master of the 10-second fill.
Whenever it was 10 seconds to commercial, I'd hit him with something or wear a
weird hat and he'd say, what is the crazy girl doing in that hat? Just a second.
We'll be right back.
Yeah. How did he get along with network executives?
They were a no-no. He just didn't get along with them at all. He didn't like
anybody. He didn't get along with sponsors or publicity people or network
people.
And that kind of left it real chilly in there except for the crew, you know.
Is it true that on one occasion perhaps the crew took up a collection to take
out ads about the show or a show that he was involved in?
Yeah. They were really a neat bunch. Every crew that we've worked with. But
they did take a collection and in a trade paper. It's never happened before or
since.
Another time they took a collection and gave him a party. But see, whenever he
was there working with them or they'd work late, he would send out to Jason's
or somewhere for food and he'd order food for everybody.
Yeah.
He was in a 91% tax bracket. That's something that doesn't exist today.
Now explain that the other way. That means that out of every dollar he got to
keep how much?
Nine cents.
Nine cents out of every buck.
And he was kind of a nice spendthrift Hungarian and he figured, I earned that
whole $100. I don't want to give $91 back.
We were talking about the crew and so forth. We have some footage. There's a
person that works on our show, who works on our show, that also worked with Mr.
Kovacs.
And we have this, this is a vintage videotape film. Are these kinescopes that
we're looking at here actually?
Yes, I think they're mostly kinescopes.
Take a look and see if anyone comes to mind as you watch some more of Mr. Kovacs
here.
Good morning and welcome to another session with Mr. Question Man.
All questions received by Mr. Question Man are carefully tabulated and some of
them are filed.
And now for our first letter this morning, Mr. Willard Dribbons of Louisville,
Kentucky writes:
Dear Mr. Question Man, what, if anything, do the following three men have in
common?
Orville Wright, Eli Whitney, and Thomas Alva Edison.
Oh, these three men do indeed have something in common. Not one of them was
born on a Tuesday.
Mr. Henry Randolph Wilson of Brooklyn, New York.
And of course, the lovable Bill Wendell, our announcer. Bill, come here.
Come on over.
Well, you look, can I ask you how old you were there, Bill, or not?
I guess I can.
In mid-20s.
Yeah.
I'm still 29, so I don't know about that.
You played cards with Ernie, didn't you?
Every week after we did the night show from the Hudson Theatre, Ernie had a
group that would
go to his apartment. That's when you lived up Central Park West, right?
Uh-huh.
We started a play maybe at 10 o'clock at night. Our usual group was Ernie, Mark
Connolly,
who wrote Green Pastures, Barry Shearer, the director, and there was Marie Torrey's
husband.
I forget.
Hal Friedman.
Hal Friedman and one or two other Broadway producers. I don't know why I was in
the game.
Maybe Ernie paid me well, but he wanted to get it all back. And we played until
6 o'clock
in the morning. Then... Did you get up and make...
It's a good, clean living for all these kids watching in today.
We had some great games.
Edie mentioned that he bought some land out of one of those pots. What kind of
door are
we talking about here?
Well, I... I bought a book on how to play poker. And I went into a game one
night, and I played
it very, very close to the vest. And when I left about 9 o'clock the next
morning, I had
over $4,000 in cash in my pocket, and I had approximately $2,000 to $3,000 in IOUs.
Ah, my...
Ernie wa